Happy Easter!
I'm back!
Yes, I successfully gave this up for Lent and survived. Happy Easter everybody! So much has happened in the past 6 and a half weeks. Anyways, as most of you already know, today commemorates the Resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ. Wait a minute, let's talk about Christ while I mentioned it.
In the past several weeks where you all have no knowledge of what I've been through, probably the most important experience that happened to me was ECHO. Short for Encountering Christ in Others, it was a weekend retreat experience where the theme was the Paschal Mystery of our Lord Jesus Christ. It started with me arriving in this oasis of a town on a Friday night, meeting up with some amazing friends. We listen to some speeches from the retreat team, and we're kept up until about 12:30 that night. Then we sleep and are forced up around 7:00 that morning. Well then it was breakfast and more talks. But they had special meanings in life. Topics included ideals, paschal mystery, community of love, Christ the Man (thank you Mr. McCoy), and marriage. After the marriage talk is where we all started to collapse emotionally. We're told to go hug people and some close friends started crying. Later that night came the Sacrament of Reconciliation, which is always nice, then just sitting around being forced up late until around 11:30 that night.
We all go back to the conference room where all of us are emotionally shredded to pieces. This is where we received our palancas, or letters of special affirmations, from our family and friends. It made me want to cry SO MUCH. Not only did they make me feel great, but there were letters from friends in which I felt I never got along with them. That night, I learned that these people REALLY care about me, regardless of how I had judged them.
So come the end of the day Sunday I was sad to leave, but I made a speech to the crowd about how the retreat experience had affected me, and received about 75 hugs in about 5 minutes. That's about 1 hug every 4 seconds. Then that Monday, when I'm back in school, whenever I crossed paths with any fellow ECHOers, it led to even more hugs. I felt high on life, and sometimes I still feel that way. Better yet, I got all these wonderful e-mails from my friends as well. Don't forget to give/receive 4.6 hugs a day!
P.S. While I was in exile from this journal, I got accepted into both Syracuse and Rensselaer. I still yearn to hear from Colgate, but I know that a bright and interesting future awaits me.
Yes, I successfully gave this up for Lent and survived. Happy Easter everybody! So much has happened in the past 6 and a half weeks. Anyways, as most of you already know, today commemorates the Resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ. Wait a minute, let's talk about Christ while I mentioned it.
In the past several weeks where you all have no knowledge of what I've been through, probably the most important experience that happened to me was ECHO. Short for Encountering Christ in Others, it was a weekend retreat experience where the theme was the Paschal Mystery of our Lord Jesus Christ. It started with me arriving in this oasis of a town on a Friday night, meeting up with some amazing friends. We listen to some speeches from the retreat team, and we're kept up until about 12:30 that night. Then we sleep and are forced up around 7:00 that morning. Well then it was breakfast and more talks. But they had special meanings in life. Topics included ideals, paschal mystery, community of love, Christ the Man (thank you Mr. McCoy), and marriage. After the marriage talk is where we all started to collapse emotionally. We're told to go hug people and some close friends started crying. Later that night came the Sacrament of Reconciliation, which is always nice, then just sitting around being forced up late until around 11:30 that night.
We all go back to the conference room where all of us are emotionally shredded to pieces. This is where we received our palancas, or letters of special affirmations, from our family and friends. It made me want to cry SO MUCH. Not only did they make me feel great, but there were letters from friends in which I felt I never got along with them. That night, I learned that these people REALLY care about me, regardless of how I had judged them.
So come the end of the day Sunday I was sad to leave, but I made a speech to the crowd about how the retreat experience had affected me, and received about 75 hugs in about 5 minutes. That's about 1 hug every 4 seconds. Then that Monday, when I'm back in school, whenever I crossed paths with any fellow ECHOers, it led to even more hugs. I felt high on life, and sometimes I still feel that way. Better yet, I got all these wonderful e-mails from my friends as well. Don't forget to give/receive 4.6 hugs a day!
P.S. While I was in exile from this journal, I got accepted into both Syracuse and Rensselaer. I still yearn to hear from Colgate, but I know that a bright and interesting future awaits me.